Love
by StardustOwl
Summary: River slaps the Doctor. Yaz is having none of that.


_**Okay, so, I love River, genuinely she's one of my favourite characters, but the way she slaps the Doctor has always made me really uncomfortable, hence this fic was born. Also, I am a slut for Thasmin.**_

 _ **I hope you all enjoy!**_

 _ **04/12/2018**_

Yaz watched through the doorway to where the Doctor stood across from a, frankly stunning, woman with a mass of blonde curls. She was clearly flirting with the Doctor, and the Doctor was laughing in the genuine and adorable way that only she could manage.

So, this was River Song.

Yaz wasn't jealous, absolutely not. The woman that she lo... admired had finally reconnected with the wife that she thought she'd lost forever. Whatever Yaz felt for the Doctor it didn't matter, this was a Good Thing. Sometimes, it had seemed that the Doctor never stopped talking about River, and Yaz had known that she had no hope to compare to the Doctor's wife, and now that she stood only a few metres away from her Yaz was now certain about this. It was always 'when River and I broke into the ancient temple of', 'when River blew up the Daleks', 'River says that the four moons of Crabeak are', 'did I ever tell you about the time that River and I met Jim the Fish?'. It wasn't until a while later that the Doctor admitted that she didn't think she'd ever see River again, and that the first time she'd ever met her wife was the time that her wife had died.

So, the Doctor had been understandably ecstatic when River, the wife she had thought had been gone forever, had pushed open the Tardis doors. River had barely had time to say 'hello sweetie' before the Doctor had pounced on her. And Yazmin couldn't begrudge her for that, River was clearly quite something.

At this point Ryan and Graham had quietly excused themselves. Yaz had tried to follow, she really had, but the mixture of happiness and desolation she felt at the sight of the Doctor with another woman had prevented her from leaving entirely.

All of this was why, when Yaz was secretly staring at the two of them, caught up in her own thoughts, she was not expecting the slap that sent the Doctor stumbling into the console, a shocked expression on her face.

Yaz was moving in an instant, yelling something incoherent as she almost threw herself in front of the Doctor and glared up at River, incensed.

"I think you should back away Ma'am," she said, her voice shaking in fury so much that she almost couldn't get the words out, because how daresomeone that the Doctor adored treat her like that.

River stared down at her in amusement from atop of her killer heels. "Oh, she's feisty, I like her," she said to the Doctor, licking her lips and smiling seductively at Yaz.

"River, don't," the Doctor said, a touch of fond exasperation in her voice. "Yaz, what's wrong, why are you mad at River?" she continued, and Yaz turned to see the Doctor's nose scrunched in confusion and a red mark on her cheek.

Yaz spluttered for a second, too shocked to find words. "She hit you," she settled on. "You fell."

The Doctor smiled comfortingly, still looking very confused, and rested a hand on Yaz's elbow. "It's okay," she said. "I'm just a lot shorter in this regeneration, I never used to fall like that. Perhaps I need to get better at keeping my balance or-"

"What do you mean this regeneration?" Yaz interrupted. "She's done this before!"

"Oh come on," said River. "You can't tell me that you don't just want to slap him... her... sometimes."

"No I don't!" Yaz spun round and glared at River indignantly.

"Clearly you haven't spent much time with her," River said drily.

Yaz was about to protest that she'd spent several months with the Doctor thank you very much and she'd never had the urge to slap her when the Doctor cut in.

"I did leave her in a library computer for a few hundred years," the Doctor said. "River was very bored until she managed to get herself out. I should have-"

"I don't care what you 'should have' done!" Yaz almost yelled at the Doctor, spinning round to face her. "She has no right to do that to you."

"Well, I can be very stupid sometimes," the Doctor said, as if she were explaining something very obvious to Yaz. All Yaz could do was gape. How could the most brilliant woman she'd ever met not see the problem with River's behaviour? "Are you going to be okay, Yaz? Would you like a custard cream?" she asked, picking one up and handing it over before Yaz could reply, as if she were doing her best to be comforting but not really sure how she should be going about doing that. Yaz took it, dumbfounded.

"It's not me who needs comforting!" Yaz protested.

"But you're the one who's getting all worked up," the Doctor said, pressing another custard cream into Yaz's palm.

"Where did you pick this one up?" River muttered behind her but Yaz ignored her.

"What would you do if someone hit me?" she demanded. "Would you think I deserved it?"

"Course not!" the Doctor exclaimed, visibly wildly offended that Yaz would even entertain that idea. "No one hurts Yaz, we can't have a universe without a happy Yaz."

"But don't you see, that's what I feel about you, about this!" Yaz said.

"Listen, Yaz-"

"Yasmin." Yaz snapped at River.

River sighed. "Yasmin, whatever you think about this it isn't about you. Whatever goes on between the Doctor and I is our business, and she clearly doesn't have an issue with it, so leave it."

River was saved from the wrath of Yasmin Khan by the arrival of Ryan and Graham into the control room.

"Oi, what's going on?" Graham asked.

"Yeah Yaz, we heard you shouting from the games room."

"She," Yaz said venemously, indicating at River. "Hit the Doctor."

"What?" said Graham.

"Get out," Ryan said.

"Really, Sweetie, your choice of friends in this regeneration is a bit off," River commented. "You can't say the Doctor's never got on your nerves."

"Yeah, but we deal with it like adults," Ryan snapped. "Everyone gets on my nerves but I don't hit them."

"I thought you were meant to be married?" Graham said, visibly appalled.

"Thank you!" Yaz exclaimed. "See, Doctor, none of us think this is okay. She shouldn't be treating you like this."

The Doctor's nose crinkled. "None of my other friends ever had a problem with it, they thought it was okay, they never said anything, some of them used to hit me too. Why are you lot different?"

"What!?" Yaz said. "Doctor, they shouldn't have done that, I can't believe that..." she trailed off, at a loss for words and tears or horror and frustration building in the corners of her eyes.

Ryan was at less of a loss for words. "That's fucked up." he said.

"It is," Graham agreed, for once not in his 'I'm going to be a responsible granddad figure and I don't think you should be saying that word' mode.

"Look, it's fine," the Doctor said, sounding nervous and impulsively grabbing one of the uneaten custard creams from Yaz's hand and taking a bite of it. "It's just what River does, I'm fine, I've always been fine, and I'm fine now." She put the rest of the biscuit in her mouth. "Now, who wants to see the solar moons of Galepogos I?" she grinned at them all, a crumb on her chin (and despite the situation Yaz couldn't help thinking how adorable she was), before moving round the console, flicking various switches.

"No. We need to talk about this," Yaz said seriously. "This is an issue and you can't just pretend it isn't, Doctor."

"I can see we aren't going to get anywhere with these people, Sweetie," River said. "Look, drop them off home and we can explore the solar moons together... and maybe we can explore some other things together," River said, openly giving the Doctor's body a long, appraising glance. "I haven't seen you in this regeneration before and it should have brought some interesting changes."

Yaz desperately, unsuccessfully, tried not to imagine exploring the Doctor's body, while the Doctor blushed and started at River in longing (and what wouldn't Yaz give to have the Doctor look at her like that), the heat in her cheeks almost hiding the red mark on the left side of her face. The Doctor then wrinkled her nose in indecision.

"But I don't want to send them home, they're my best friends. Can't travel the universe without my best friends, can't travel the universe without Yaz." She said it so matter-of-factly, continuing to flick various switches, but Yaz couldn't help ducking her head and blushing slightly. Biting her lip she stared back up at the Doctor, who didn't seem to realise the implications of what she'd just said.

River, however, did.

"Well," she said, a pained smile on her lips, sauntering back towards the door. "I guess you need to make a decision about your friend then. I've got a tomb to rob, I was going to invite you with me, but I think you need some time. I'll be back here tomorrow, Sweetie, I hope you make the right choice by then."

"River, wait!" the Doctor implored, spinning round, shock on her face like she'd only just realised what was happening (which might have been the case, she had been glaring at one of the buttons on the console for the last half-minute).

"Decide," River shrugged, and closed the door. Even through her anger Yaz wondered how a person managed to do that so seductively.

A suffocating silence hung in the air before, "Why would you do that?" the Doctor turned to them, fury shining in her eyes. "I'd just got her back! That was the first time I'd seen her in hundreds of years and now she's gone! I wanted to travel the universe with all of you and now look what you've done!"

Yaz bit her lip. Of all the things that she'd been expecting when she had first intervened, the certainly hadn't been expecting the Doctor to turn on them.

"Look, Doc," Graham said. "When I married Grace I made a commitment, to love and cherish and protect her, and if that's not happening here then maybe you're better off without her."

"But River's brilliant! She's like fire and particle accelerators and we go on the best adventures!" the Doctor protested. Yasmin thought her eyes might have been watering. "And I'm not breakable, River can't hurt me that much."

"We never said you were breakable, Doc," Ryan replied. "We just think that you deserve to be treated better."

"I'm fine with River!"

"Then why did you stay with us, why didn't you follow her and break into the tomb?"

The Doctor ducked her head and gritted her teeth, swinging round violently and striding off towards the living quarters, her coat swishing out behind her.

Yaz sighed. That could have gone so much better. She just never thought she'd see the day when the woman she loved (she wasn't even disputing that any more) could be so wrong about something, so willing to make excuses for someone who hurt her.

-L-

Yaz walked through the archway to the library, preparing to return the seventy-fourth edition of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (complete with historical introduction and interactive holograms) when she found herself suddenly assaulted by a "Yaz!", a blur of blonde hair and arms hugging tightly around her neck. It took a few seconds for Yaz's brain to catch up and for her to realise that that it was the Doctor who'd just thrown her arms around her. But before she could return the hug the Doctor let go and grabbed Yaz's hand, dragging her towards a mess of metal, tubes and wires.

"What do you think?" the Doctor asked, her cheek was mercifully back to its normal colour when Yaz checked it. "I think that maybe it needs a couple extra chambers to contain the endo-thermic reactions...yes it does, come on Yaz, let's add them in!"

"Wait, I...what does it do?" Yaz asked, and suddenly the Doctor was off, clearly delighting in the thrill to explaining her project to someone (and at her own brilliance), talking at a million miles an hour. Strangely enough though, Yaz felt like she understood the basic idea of what the Doctor was trying to create.

"I don't like it when she hits me," the Doctor said suddenly, and Yaz was temporarily thrown by the abrupt change in direction of the Doctor's spiel. "It's usually a surprise, I'll be talking about something and then she'll just slap me. I'm not expecting it, I don't feel...what's the word Yaz?" she asked from where she was enthusiastically pulling various pieces of the machine apart. "...safe? Yes that's it! Safe. Not always, anyway. And Amy used to do it too. Amy was brilliant. They're both brilliant. I love River, she's amazing, best archaeologist in the universe, and probably the only person I'm okay with having a gun. She looks really hot when she's shooting things. But she's so clever. The Tardis loves her, Yaz! She can fly the Tardis better than me, though don't let her know I said that! I don't want to loose her again, I can't. Oh, I'm sorry Yaz, you're not following this are you? See, that's sometimes when she slaps me, I ramble on about things and no one gets what I'm saying, I need to be snapped out of my own head sometimes, I think. And, well, it does work, it stops me doing this. I..." The Doctor trailed off, looking nervously at Yaz.

Yaz frowned from where she'd placed herself on the floor next to the Doctor, then smiled comfortingly at her, grabbing her hand impulsively and rubbing her fingers along the Doctor's knuckles. The Doctor's eyes widened.

"I love it when you ramble on about things, I don't care if half the time I don't understand what you're on about, though don't worry I got what you were saying just then. You're brilliant, and its enough just to listen to you, to see how excited you get about things, that makes me happy, because it's what makes you you," Yaz said. "And, even if you did leave River trapped in a computer...I'm not really sure how that could happen to be honest... she still shouldn't have hurt you."

"It was the only way to save her!" the Doctor said earnestly, sounding wretched. "I thought it was what she'd have wanted me to do! And I didn't think there was a way to get her out or I would have done it, I swear I would have done!"

"I believe you," Yaz said and suddenly found herself with an armful of Doctor again.

"You wouldn't hit me, would you Yaz, ever?" the Doctor asked, her voice muffled by Yaz's shoulder and talking even faster than usual, so that Yaz only just managed to work out what she'd said.

"Never," Yaz confirmed, rubbing circles into the Doctor's back with her thumbs. She was still wearing her ridiculous coat that Yaz loved, even though it was now stained with oil from the machine. "You're the most brilliant woman I've ever met, I don't understand why anyone would want to hurt you!"

"Good," the Doctor said, then continued more hesitantly. "Yaz, I know you said to your mum that we weren't together, but were you telling the truth?"

"What?" Yaz laughed, shaking her head a bit in confusion. "Well, yes, we weren't together at the time. But... we could be... if you'd like to be?"

"Yes, I would," the Doctor cried, leaping to her feet and dragging Yaz with her. "You have to ask! I didn't know you had to ask to be with someone! New brain, old memories still trying to sort themselves out. I remember with River we were always just together, right from the beginning, maybe because we were always doing things in the wrong order. I didn't realise that you had to ask!" her nose did the adorable scrunching motion again. "That's why when your mum asked I wasn't sure because when I'm around you I feel a bit like I do when I'm with River, so I wasn't sure if we were together or not, and oh, are we together now?"

"Yeah, we are," Yaz laughed.

"Brilliant!" the Doctor said.

"Does this mean all that time I was wasting thinking you would never like me in that way was completely pointless?" Yaz frowned.

The Doctor gaped at her. "Not like you? But you're Yazmin Khan! You're brilliant Yaz! Come on, what do you humans do in a relationship? Where do you want to go, the whole of time and space, just you and me!"

"I'm not sure, I..." Yaz trailed off as a thought hit her, the point of what had started all of this. "But, you can't be with me, you're married to River."

The Doctor frowned. "No, that's not true at all. River's been married heaps of times. We never meet in the right order, never know if we're going to meet again, so I guess we can be with other people."

"So, then this is okay?"

"Course."

"Brilliant!" Yaz said, and then kissed the Doctor on impulse. She drew back a second later, worried she'd overstepped, to see the Doctor crinkling her nose and licking her lips. She looked at Yaz, her eyes sparkling.

"Never kissed Yaz before," the Doctor said to herself. "I really like it. Can we do it again?"

Yaz's mind felt like it was lit up by a thousand fireworks as she and the Doctor kissed again, deeper this time, both of them pulling the other closer.

It was better than Yaz could ever have imagined.

 _ **So, there will likely be another chapter to this as I realise that I haven't actually had the Doctor say to River that if they want to be together then she'll have to stop hitting her. And I love River, I really do, I just hate this aspect of her character, so OT3 potential maybe? What do you guys think?**_


End file.
